The present disclosure concerns flash storage devices and, more particularly, optimized garbage collection processes for flash storage devices.
Solid-state storage devices (SSDs) may use flash memory as a non-volatile storage medium. Host data files may be written sequentially to flash memory. As portions of the host data files are updated over time, the host data files may become scattered across the flash memory. This scattering may be due to flash memory management techniques used to maximize the life of flash memory in view of limitations on the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles flash memory can withstand before becoming unusable. However, scattered host data files may require multiple read operations to read out a requested host data file from the flash memory thereby increasing latency in responding to read commands